SYMPHONY N°4 “WEST POINT” for Symphonic Band by MORTON GOULD (USA, 1913 – 1996)

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Premiered by West Point Academy Band conducted by Morton Gould

on 13 Apr 1952 in West Point, USA

Publish by Schirmer | Purchase at Hal Leonard

Symphony N°4 « West Point » by American composer, conductor, pianist and arranger Morton Gould is our Composition of the Week.

Symphony N°4 was composed during the months of January and February 1952, and it was premiered on April 13, of the same year, to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the West Point Academy. On that occasion, the West Point Academy Band was conducted by the composer.

Ever since, the symphony bears the name of the famous school.

Symphony N°4 is scored for a standard band setting and it is structured in two single movements, I. Epitaphs and II. Marches, employing both traditional and modern techniques, adeptly changing colors and styles to engage the listener. It has an overall duration of 20 minutes.

The music is edited by Schirmer and available through Hal Leonard.

« The first movement, Epitaphs, is both lyrical and dramatic. The quiet and melodic opening statement of the main theme leads directly into a broad and noble exposition of one of the motifs, becoming a passacaglia (a musical form based on continuous variations over a ground bass) based on a martial theme first stated by the tuba. After a series of variations which grow in intensity, the opening lyricism, combined with the passacaglia motif and an allusion to Taps, makes a quiet but dissonant closing to the first movement. The second and final movement is lusty and gay in character. The texture is a stylization of marching tunes that parades past in an array of embellishments and rhythmic variants. At one point there is a simulation of a fife and drum corps which, incidentally, was the instrumentation of the original West Point Band. After a brief transformed restatement of the themes in the first movement, the work finishes in a virtuoso coda of martial fanfares and flourishes.” Program Notes by Morton Gould

Morton Gould was recognized early as a child prodigy with abilities in improvisation and composition. His first composition was published at age six. Gould studied at the Institute of Musical Art, although his most important teachers were Abby Whiteside and Vincent Jones.

During the Depression, Gould, while a teenager, worked in New York City playing piano in movie theaters, as well as with vaudeville acts. When Radio City Music-Hall opened, Gould was hired as the staff pianist. By 1935, he was conducting and arranging orchestral programs for New York's WOR radio station, where he reached a national audience via the Mutual Broadcasting System, combining popular programming with classical music.

As a conductor, Gould led all of the major American orchestras as well as those of Canada, Mexico, Europe, Japan, and Australia. With his orchestra, he recorded music of many classical standards, including Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue on which he also played the piano. He won a Grammy Award in 1966 for his recording of Charles Ives' First Symphony, with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. In 1983, Gould received the American Symphony Orchestra League's Gold Baton Award. In 1986, he was president of ASCAP, a position he held until 1994. In 1986 he was elected to the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.

Incorporating new styles into his repertoire as they emerged, Gould incorporated wildly disparate elements, including a rapping narrator and a singing fire department into commissions for the Pittsburgh Youth Symphony. In 1993, his work Ghost Waltzes was commissioned for the ninth Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. In 1994, Gould received the Kennedy Center Honor in recognition of lifetime contributions to American culture.

In 1995, Gould was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for String music, a composition commissioned by the National Symphony Orchestra in recognition of the final season of director Mtislav Rostropovich. In 2005, he was honored with the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. He also was a member of the board of the American Symphony Orchestra League and of the National Endowment for the Arts music panel.

Other works for winds include :

• Ballad for Band (1946)

• Fourth of July (1948)

• Derivations for solo clarinet and band (1955)

• Santa Fe Saga (1956)

• Saint Lawrence Suite (1958)

• Star-Spangled Overture (transc. James Ripley) (1976)

• Amber Waves (transc. James Ripley) (1976)

• Jubilo (transc. James Ripley) (1976)